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Professor Shonku o Bagdader Bakso
Professor Shonku o Bagdader Bakso (English translation: Professor Shonku and ''the Box of Baghdad) was first published in Sandesh magazine, between February-March 1969. Plot Entry: 19 November The story begins with Professor Shonku and Professor Petruci sitting in a restaurant at Baghdad. Shonku and his colleagues are in Baghdad to attend the "International Inventors Conference". In this conference all the reputed inventors of the world come to show and discuss their inventions. Prof. Shonku has carried with him his latest invention, omniscope, which is a type of spectacles, using which can work as a telescope, a microscope or an X-ray depending on the users choice. The conference has already ended, but some participants like Professor Shonku, Professor Goldstein and Professor Petruci have decided to stay back to visit the city. After sometime, Goldstein returns with an unknown old man, who he introduces as Al Habbal. Entry: 11 PM Al Habbal proposes the scientist to show them an unique object but first the scientists had to promise that they would neither tell anybody about the object not they would ask to take it. When the scientists promised, Al Habbal told them that the objects are located at a place which is about 70 miles from Baghdad, they decided to go there the next day. Entry: 20 November The next morning, Al Habbal visited their hotel with a car. They started early in the morning. After travelling for sometimes, they reached a forest. Inside the forest there was a rock. Al Habbal screamed the famous ''Sim Sim hymn, and a door in the rock opened. When they entered the door they came to a cave. Al Habbal chanted another hymn to close the door. Al Habbal turned on a lamp. Inside the cave there were a lot of precious things made of metals including gold. Al Habbal asked the scientist whether someone of them can read ancient Sumerian script. When Petruci said, he can, Al Habbal asked him to read something written on a stone. After reading the stone, Petruci said that, the stone contained the location and description of the cave, the hymn to open its door. He also said that, it is written that, inside the cave their is the grave of wizard, Gemal Nishahir Al Hararit and a box which belonged to the wizard. The box is supposed to work as "Living History", and anyone who disbelieved this history or insulted the cave will be cursed by the Gods of the Ziggurat. Goldstein was becoming more and more impatient and irritated. Al Habbal ignored him, and said that he stole the stone, when he was working as an interpreter for a foreign excavation team. Goldstein was furious. He started to abuse Al Habbal and accused him of becoming a crook. Al Habbal remained calm and requested Goldstein to be calm. Inside the cave, the scientists also saw the skeleton of the wizard. Goldstein could not bear any more, he shouted the hymn to open the door. But it was fruitless. So he jumped and grabbed Al Habbal's collar. The other two scientists tried to separate them. Al Habbal, however, remained calm, and told that, the hymn works only if it is incanted in a particular tune. Goldstein insisted that Al Habbal should open the door immediately as he cannot stay in the stuffy cave any longer. Now Al Habbal requested the scientist to help him to solve the mystery of the box, as he himself failed to solve it. Entry: 21 November, 6:30 AM Entry: 22 November, 8 PM Entry: 23 November